ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Blues made a pit stop at home for one game, after returning from a 10-day, four-game Canadian road swing looking for a season sweep against the San Jose Sharks on Thursday.
The Blues fought in the third period and battled back, but ultimately fell, 4-3 to drop their second game in the past three.
Jake Neighbours had a goal and an assist and Brayden Schenn and Jordan Kyrou each scored third-period goals to rally the team but could get no closer than a goal.
Jordan Binnington made 27 saves for the Blues (14-14-2), who dropped back to .500 on the season.
Let’s dive into tonight’s three takeaways:
* No energy early, no legs, not being sharp all connected — The Blues talked at length at the morning skate earlier in the day that this would be a tough game to play, simply being on the road for so long and having to adjust their body clocks back to being in the Midwest.
Coach Jim Montgomery even said the team may have been back home from the 3.5-plus hour flight back from Vancouver on Wednesday but that their bodies were “still in the Rocky Mountains.”
They stressed the need to have energy early, and if the legs weren’t there right away, play a smart game.
That was hardly the case, falling behind 1-0 on a Tyler Toffoli goal 1:21 in on a goalmouth scramble. But this was the case really throughout the first period when the Blues were outshot 14-4, they lost every loose puck battle, their puck play wasn’t good and the lack of energy and no playing smart went had in hand.
“We wanted to start on time, we didn’t start on time,” Montgomery said. “We didn’t manage the game well enough early on.”
Captain Brayden Schenn said the team needed to be in it mentally and if you’re not, then it affects the physical side.
“It’s a little bit of both (mental and physical),” Schenn said. “It’s definitely the time change, right? A couple hours, getting up early, but every team does it in the League. That’s no excuse. They’re tougher games to play, no doubt about it. But that’s at the same time, when you have that, you have to play smart. We’d probably like to have our first two periods back and just manage the game a little bit better.”
“We were prepared. We were ready. What we talked about is if your game’s not where it needs to be early, don’t force things and play the right way. I just think that we for whatever reason, it took us some time to get going. We found our legs in the third, but just have to play a little bit smarter when you know you’re not going to…